[nmh]

I don't buy this ... some time ago a movie was made about this kind of scenario. Later the truth came out. The "mother" slept around. It happened that she had sex with two different guys and conceived the two different skin colors through that. I suspect the same is true here.

How's the DNA match up to Mom and Dad?

[Old_Mil]

I don't buy this ... some time ago a movie was made about this kind of scenario. Later the truth came out. The "mother" slept around. It happened that she had sex with two different guys and conceived the two different skin colors through that. I suspect the same is true here.

Looking at the two children, it's highly unlikely in this case given the similarities in their appearance. Had the two eggs been fertilized by two different men, the facial features and appearance of the two children would be far less similar.

There are two genes that control the production of melanin, each of which has a dominant and recessive expression. This leads to a possible 16 combinations of genotype when coding for skin colour as follows:

# Genotype - Phenotype
1 M1M1M2M2 - Black Skin
2 M1M1M2m2 - Dark Brown Skin
3 M1M1m2m2 - Brown Skin
4 M1m1m2m2 - Light Brown Skin
5 m1m1m2m2 - White Skin

I'm actually surprised that this sort of thing doesn't happen more often. It is illustrative of how what we see as "races" today all sprung forth from Noah's M1m1M2m2 heterozygous family.